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Ready-to-Wear

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On View

Date:

1955

Artist:

Stuart DavisAmerican, 1892–1964

About this artwork

Stuart Davis was acquainted from an early age with John Sloan and Robert Henri, leaders of the so-called Ashcan School, a group of artists committed to depicting all aspects of modern urban life. Davis studied at Henri’s New York school, but he eventually came to disagree with his teacher’s belief in the preeminence of content over composition and form; instead, he created a style in which he generalized and abstracted his shapes and the spaces between them.

Nonetheless, Davis’s art is never totally abstract. Twentieth-century America is reflected in the shapes and colors he chose and in the sheer vitality of his compositions. His style—big, bright, bold, and clear—is completely appropriate to his subject matter. Forms have been reduced to large colored planes; words or numbers are simplified and offered as elements of design. In Ready-to-Wear, the bright, unmixed colors recall those of the French artist Fernand Léger. The way in which they intersect and interrupt one another, however, conveys a mood that is distinctly American: energetic, jazzy, mass produced—all qualities summed up in the title. The planes, reminiscent of overlapping pasted-down paper cutouts, even suggest the garment patterns from which ready-to-wear clothes are assembled.